


down by the highway side

by tsunderestorm



Category: Overwatch (Video Game)
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-11-16
Updated: 2016-11-16
Packaged: 2018-08-31 07:30:31
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,068
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8569663
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tsunderestorm/pseuds/tsunderestorm
Summary: There's a rumor in the Southwest, more of an urban legend. A story to tell in the dead of the night. A horror story so chilling it turns the warmest of blood into ice, a love story so poignant it tugs at heartstrings like they’re controls for a marionette: one about a just man and Death.





	

**Author's Note:**

> Listen to [Soap&Skin's cover of Me and the Devil](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xd9LpME3jnk).

There's a rumor in the Southwest, more like an urban legend. A story to tell in the dead of the night. A horror story so chilling it turns the warmest of blood into ice, a love story so poignant it tugs at heartstrings like they’re controls for a marionette. It’s told down the line from loose lips into eager ears; whispered over fence posts, trickling down the line of tiny towns on the abandoned stretches of Route 66.  _ That Jesse McCree,  _ they all say,  _ don't you make him turn Peacekeeper on you. He's got a righteous sense of justice, ‘cept for when it comes to the Reaper. _

Jesse knows what they say. He hears it on the few occasions he steps in the convenience store, spurs jingling as he crosses the tile, has heard it all a dozen times over. The way people cup their hands and whisper to their neighbors, the way they scatter like tumbleweeds in the wind.

_ Lying with the devil wasn't enough, he had to go and marry death itself _ .

Jesse likes to think of it as keeping his demons on a leash. There isn't anyone in the world more fitting to bring justice to the wayward wraith if he should need it, and there’s no one better equipped to love him, either. Folks need to mind their business.

He grins from under the brim of his beaten old hat, bites down on an imported chili lime lollipop as he winks at the naysayers. Through the aisles he walks, selecting peppers: skinny green Anaheims, wrinkled green jalapeños, broad poblanos and a habanero whose skin burns a cut on his fingertip. He and Gabe use more peppers than anything in their cooking, sharp bursts of flavor to cut through the numbness, thing Gabe can sense over the ever-present taste of ash in his mouth. The heat doesn’t bother Jesse, never has, whether it's dry desert under his feet or fire blooming on his tongue. Or, he thinks when it comes to Gabe, lust coursing like wildfire through every nerve in his body.

Jesse knows he's losing his mind. That happens when you get older, he’s heard, or when you've seen as much shit as he has, been knocked in the head over and over. Or when you're in love, he guesses. When he'd been young and stupid he'd made a decision, become the rat who got out before the ship sank and bailed on Overwatch, gone underground. Never again will he make that mistake, never again will he walk away when someone he loves needs him. Yeah, sure - he knows Gabe isn't entirely innocent, knows all about his time with Talon and the path of bodies like empty husks, but he doesn't much care these days. Because goddammit, he needs him and even if Gabe says  _no, I don't need you_ , _get the fuck out;_ even if he says all kinds of shit as he vanishes into tendrils of inky black smoke like the tentacles of some great beast, Jesse knows he needs him too. That's one thing he truly believes.

Most days he doesn’t know what else to believe, when one set of lips says the Blackwatch Commander started the Gibraltar incident but Gabriel Reyes himself says different, has the bullet holes that never close and the missing cheek to prove it.  _ Morrison fired first _ , Gabe says, when Jesse gets curious enough to ask yet again and his blood burns. He'd been so righteous when he was younger, pretentious in a way and it's not like that's gone, no. Not entirely - he'd still fight for what's right in less than a heartbeat, still dreams about being a hero when the sun gets high in the sky and he's caught in an afternoon siesta. It's just that he's older now, wiser. Something like that. 

Time moves differently in their little ghost town; like it's stuck on a loop. An infomercial in the dead zone hours of the morning that seems never-ending. In a way it’s good to forget.  Bit by bit, they make the town theirs -  douse the ever-burning chemical fires, arrange and rearrange the bottles of booze in the tavern, clean the grease covered years-old food out of Big Earl’s. They're eager for the distraction, yearning for some sort of purpose and direction. Something Jesse hasn't had for years, something Gabe had too much of it until it almost burned him alive.

It takes them weeks to scrub the Deadlock gang’s tacky spray-painted logo off of every surface they'd tagged. Gabe, ever theatrical and artistic, picks up a paintbrush on his more corporeal days and fashions a mural, a testament to the good old days. He paints the sunrise coming up over the horizon at Gibraltar, the green and silver flash of Genji’s katana, the sun glinting off of Jesse's polished gun. The good things. 

They fix up the motel room by room, sweat on Jesse's brow and a knot in his back from working all day. Old age, he laughs, though he’s only just hit 40. Doors go back on hinges, blood stains vanish out of carpets, jagged glass windowpanes are covered. It’s a ghost town, but it’s theirs. The honeymoon suite is their home, the heart-shaped mattress their marriage bed. Color TV and a bubbling jacuzzi, all the comforts of home. There's a chapel on the outskirts of town, altar desecrated and religious statues smashed to bits and it's there they say their vows, profane and unofficiated. Gabe tells him  _ it's about damn time _ as he kisses him, musty and half rotten, like wilting flowers and wet graves. A taste he, God save his weary soul, has come to love as much as the man himself.

It's in their haunted town that Jesse makes love to death in a bed draped in red and black velvet, takes the devil inside in a bed of sin and lust and a love that just won’t die. Gabe’s eyes are so dark they're black, teeth sharp and hungry. Like a wolf, but he's long since been tamed. His mission done, Jack Morrison in the ground six feet under, Gabriel Reyes can rest, let the vengeful fire boiling in his blood quiet, let the vanishing slips of smoke knit together and rebuild what's left. It’s there that they live out the rest of their days: the gunslinger who followed his man in black to the end.


End file.
